


i'm not brittle, i'm just a riddle

by getmean



Series: sunbeams are never made like me [1]
Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Established Relationship, Femme Snafu!!, Gender Exploration, Grief, M/M, Non-binary character, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25775380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: I’ve just always wanted to feel pretty. Not pretty like a man, not pretty like Eugene sometimes calls me when he fucks me. I know what that looks like. No, I want what Flo had, glowing in her wedding dress. I just don’t know what its name is.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Series: sunbeams are never made like me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110005
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	i'm not brittle, i'm just a riddle

**Author's Note:**

> this is set post-war, in my own fantasy world where gene and snafu both got off the train new orleans together :~)

It all started, weirdly enough, with Burgie’s wedding. My old black slacks, my old white shirt Eugene had forced me into. Shit made me feel like a carbon copy of every other fella in the room. The lot of us milling around clucking like penguins. Flo’s beautiful white dress, all done up in pearls and lace and rouge pinched into her cheeks. It’s hard not to be drawn in by something that pretty. Hell, I spent so long in my youth being drawn in to pretty things that I didn’t sleep with a man until Eugene. Of course, he was just another pretty thing in a long line of them. 

The way silk catches the light, moving like water over the surface. The beauty of a done-up face. Red lips, red cheeks, thick black lashes. I’ve been growing my hair out for years; I guess what came after was a natural progression, in a way. 

It didn’t really start with Flo in her wedding dress, or her bridesmaids all made up in their shiny pastel frocks like candied almonds. It didn’t start with my decision to stop cutting my hair. The fact is, I’ve never felt attractive, even though I’ve been told I am. Not handsome, not pretty, not even alright-if-you-squint. Not just in my own skin, anyway. Merriell Shelton, unadorned. Sure I can put a nice pair of pants on and feel good when Eugene wants to take them right back off me, but it’s not the same. When I was a kid I used to get into my mama’s jewellery box, into her dresses, all her pretty scarfs and sweet-smelling cosmetics. I used to feel good then. I think she got a kick out of it too; used to let me stand by her elbow and watch her do her face before work. Mascara, mouth open as she combed it into her lashes. Used to make me stand still and stack bangles on my skinny kid wrists, clip earrings onto my earlobes until they pinched the skin hot and I pulled them off. Her jewellery box was a treasure chest; shell inlaid, velvet lined. Glittering with all her things. I used to paw through it like it was my favourite toy. Like I said, I’ve always been drawn towards pretty things. Eugene calls me a magpie. 

My mama had this perfume I could probably pick up out of a line up, even now. Her going-out perfume, her special-occasion perfume. Rich and multilayered and spicy. I wanted to get my hands on it when she died, but never found the bottle when we were clearing out her stuff. Me and my big brother, the only ones who could stand to do it. I took the jewellery box. I took the scarves she used to tie all her long, thick curls up in. The rest, well, I can’t remember what we did with it. My mind was so fogged up with her death I don’t think I remember much of that year at all. I put her things in the back of my closet and didn’t look at them for years; all the cut glass I thought were diamonds as a kid, all the gold and the silver, the delicate necklaces, the myriad of rings. In the dark, untouched. 

Flo had worn a delicate silver chain that had laid just so on her collarbones, at the wedding. Some teardrop-shaped blue stone hanging there below the hollow of her throat. I remember watching it hungrily. The shine of the lights on the silvery floral pins in her black hair. Eugene had leaned into my side and whispered, _she’s radiant_ , his hand on my knee, squeezing. My plain black slacks. My plain white shirt. My plain face. How do you tell someone you want those kinda compliments? I’ve never been good with words.

When I came along, my mama thought I was gonna be a little girl. Her first girl, after the gaggle of boys that came before me. Sometimes I wonder just how much of her hope for my gender changed me up before I even came outta her. If you wish hard enough for something, don’t it come true? 

I’ve just always wanted to feel pretty. Not pretty like a man, not pretty like Eugene sometimes calls me when he fucks me. I know what that looks like. No, I want what Flo had, glowing in her wedding dress. I just don’t know what its name is. 

I can’t tell Eugene, even though I tell him everything, even though we’ve been through something together that most people never will. I always used to tell myself that if I lived through the war, I’d come out the other side and stop keeping myself from the things I want. I was so sure that I’d die out there in all that fucking dirt and rain that I never gave it much thought beyond that, so when the day came and I found myself stepping down off that train with Eugene in tow, my life stretching unfettered and expectant in front of me, I faltered. Too much pressure. Stayed my old self. Then mama died and I stuffed all her things in the back of my closet, and I guess I forgot that old wartime promise to myself. 

Not completely. I have Eugene, I have friends. I’m loved, I love. I have an apartment with hot water, a relationship with a fraction of my brothers, food in the cupboards and an alleycat I feed daily. There’s little more a man needs, huh? I used to think so. These urges towards beauty have been rearing up taller and taller for years. I think at some point they’ll be so big that they’ll be painful. For now, they ain’t much bigger than a dull ache. I dunno how much longer they’ll stay like that. 

I can’t admit to it. Not me, mean-talking hard-working full-time labourer, dirty jeans and rough stubble on my face. It’s easier to be like this. A face in the crowd of all the rest of the men I work with. Men’s men. Spitting on the ground, beer from the dirty bottle, yellow pit-stained men’s men. What would they say if they knew how I looked at Flo’s dress? How I let my eyes get caught by department store displays? I ain’t willing to find out. I’d sooner let them find out about mine and Eugene’s whole domestic bliss before telling them I wanna know how my legs look in stockings. There’s levels to these things, even in free-wheeling, _laissez les bon temps rouler_ New Orleans. 

Despite it all, I find myself kneeling in my closet one sweltering day in the depths of July, tossing shoes and winter clothes and various other crap out of the way in search of the familiar shine of my mama’s jewellery box. Eugene, out at work. Me? Enjoying a rare day off in the middle of the week. One afternoon beer had turned into two, which had turned into me lighting a smoke and pacing the rooms in mine and Eugene’s apartment until I gathered the courage to do what was making me restless. 

The wood is cool when I pull it from the back of the cupboard. The inlaid shell even cooler. I run my fingers over it, cigarette wobbling between my teeth as I trace my thumbs down the sides. I haven’t opened it since the funeral, and even that was a quick glance. Just to check and make sure everything was still there, that none of my sticky-fingered brothers’ girls had gotten their hands on it. I couldn’t look at it head on, back then. Not with the war at my back, making the whole ordeal of her death worse, clinging onto me with all claws out.

 _I just wish you could get a break, for once,_ Eugene had whispered to me, slumped next to me at the wake. I remember my head was banging that day, like someone was taking shots at my skull with a baseball bat. Neither of us sleeping, neither of us eating. That’s love, I think. Grief overspill. Eugene’s always caught the excess of what I just can’t handle.

I open the jewellery box. The smell of my mama washes over me.

It’s just like I remembered. The red velvet, treasure nestled in it. Slowly, I sit back against the bed, settle the box into my lap so I have a hand free to run over its contents. Rings looping onto my fingers as I pass over them, as if they’re drawn to me just as much as I am to them. Plenty turquoise, plenty gold. A smattering of other stones; a few gaudy glass pieces I never saw her wear. I cross my ankles, and get comfortable. Squeeze a gold bangle over my knuckles, leaving it to rest a comforting weight against the heel of my palm as I delve back in. I feel reduced weirdly to childhood. Baby me in a big body. It makes me ache. 

There’s a tube of lipstick in there, which I open up with near-reverence, it feels so special. My mama was darker than me, and the lipstick is dark to match. A deep plum. I twist the tube and watch it rise up, hold it close to my face to smell it. Is there much space between nostalgia and grief? There’s a reason why I’ve avoided this box. The lipstick smells like nothing. I set it aside carefully and try and slide a couple rings onto my fingers, only for them to stop at my first knuckle. My broad hands. I snort. A lot has changed since the same rings were rattling off my fingers at age ten. In some ways I’m glad she never saw me after the war. By the time I got back she was so sick she couldn’t see how bad I was. It would’ve hurt her, to know. She always tried so hard to protect me; so hard I always wonder at whether she knew about me and the things (or people) I liked. They always say a mom knows, huh? It feels good to think she saw me and decided she didn’t care. 

Her wedding ring, her engagement ring. So tiny. I pull the wedding ring out to thread onto the chain around my neck, drop it beneath my t-shirt to warm against my bare skin. Maybe one day I’ll get it re-sized and give it to Eugene. For now, I set the box aside and get on my knees to rummage for the bag of clothes I stashed back there. Her scarves, a few bits of clothing. The beer’s gone from my empty stomach straight to my head, and made me bold. I tear open the bag to find a wealth of colours inside, silk and cotton and nylon, slipping through my fingers. All smelling like her; like her hair, like her perfume. Indescribable. I’ve found the space between nostalgia and sadness. Press a handful of fabric to my face to breathe in a shaky breath, then get to my knees and then my feet, bringing the box with me as I pace through to the bathroom. 

The light in there is soft, as though it knows I need comforting. Falling in through the window set high in the wall, washing me over in its light as I set the box and all its contents onto the side by the sink. I examine my face in the mirror. It’s hard not to pick out the masculine parts of me. My jaw, the scruff of stubble around my chin. I pull at the skin, bare my teeth at my reflection. Wonder at what the guys at work would think of this, as I push my hair behind my ears and thread an earring through each lobe. I had them pierced a handful of years ago, though rarely wear more than a single hoop through one of them. I guess I’ve always been afraid of what it’d look like. As much as I don’t like it, there’s always a fear there. Like it ain’t enough that I’m shacked up with a man; I’ve gotta go wear earrings in both ears to add to it? Stupid. I step back from the mirror, and blink at myself. The gold winks attractively from my hair; wild and just brushing my shoulders these days. I imagine Eugene seeing me like this. I imagine the guys from the garage seeing me. 

I always feel as though I’m toeing a line I can’t cross. Like I should leave it just at the wanting. I know it’s something from deep inside of me; some goddamn prejudice I can’t scrape out. Most days I feel torn between my want and my distaste. It’s something that got bred into me, something that got hammered home by those long years in the military and all the years that came before it, and after it. My whole life. The draw I always had to prettiness that I mistook for wanting to be in a woman’s bed. I can’t be the only one, can I? Something is fluttering under my breastbone; I trace my fingers down my chest just to try and find it, to try and see if I can feel the pulse from the outside. I just find myself. Flat, unyielding, warm-skinned me. I’m swiping the plum lipstick onto my mouth before I can talk myself out of it, and doubling back to pick through mama’s things with the weight of the makeup on me like a physical thing. Makes me over-aware of my mouth. Sticky, heavy, sliding. My heart drumming away inside me. 

The thing about war is that you gotta give yourself over to it, you gotta let it overwhelm you, or you don’t survive. You gotta play the game. In a way, whatever I’m doing right now feels the same. 

Eugene loves my hair long, and so do I. As I paw through all the pretty bits I saved from my mama’s things, I think about Eugene doing me up. Picking me out jewellery, picking me out something silky to wrap my curls in. Touching his hand to my waist and seeing me as something other than myself. I trust him to see me beneath it all. Somehow, I know he wouldn’t be shocked about this. Things rarely faze him deeply. 

I pluck a red scarf from the mix, snaked through with shimmering gold thread. Pace back through to the bathroom where I follow the steps I remember from my youth, twisting the fabric around the back of my head, knotting it at the front, tugging it this way and that until I’m looking into the mirror and I see — 

Her. My mama. 

Well, a little bit more hard-faced. A few more lines around the mouth than she had. I ain’t as pretty as her — but I’m picking myself apart. Wish I could live in that split second where my eyes met the eyes of my reflection and only saw her. Gold earrings, deep purple lipstick. Hair pulled up from her neck. Jesus. I’m the same age now as when she had me. Ain’t that a funny thing to think? I feel halfway towards wanting to cry, only the tears won’t come up. I swallow around them, and lean towards the mirror, hands white-knuckled around the edges of the sink as I tilt my head this way and that. I think it should be a little embarrassing, to be a thirty-four year old man near tears at his reflection, but I’m alone so I don’t care. Me and her have the same nose, the same wide, searching eyes. The same mouth, always my most feminine feature, and now even more so with her lipstick heavy on it. I guess parents never really die. Just like I left a fragment of myself out there in Japan, she left a fragment of herself down here on earth in me.

I go and I fix myself a drink. Not beer. I drink a gin and tonic just like Eugene likes; heavy on the gin, a generous squeeze of lemon. I eat a sandwich, and leave lipstick marks on the bread. I sit in the armchair, and catch glimpses of myself in the mirror over the hall stand; dark-haired, pretty, my mouth a full and sensual smudge. A dress would complete the picture but for some reason I can’t make myself do it; instead I entertain myself with the figure in the mirror. Feminine from the neck up. An old white tee and a pair of slacks throwing it off balance. My hard, flat chest and stomach. The unrelenting shape of me, slim-hipped and narrow, broad-shouldered. Some part of me enjoys the contrast. I think of Flo at her wedding. Did she feel like this?

It’s addictive to be yourself. After I wipe the lipstick from my mouth and flush the plum-stained paper so Eugene won’t find it, I catch myself wishing for another afternoon off work. Or an evening; Eugene out with colleagues. Out with friends. He won’t raise at eyebrow at me wanting to stay in over socialising with near-strangers. I could make myself up and watch myself in the mirror to my heart’s content. I find myself thinking about it daily; so much so that even Eugene notices my distraction. He gets that worried crease between his brows that reminds me so much of those years after the war. I think he thinks I’m about to backslide or something.

“Feelin’ okay?” he keeps asking me, quiet nights when we’re alone together. The radio playing into the silence, his hand rubbing soothingly at the nape of my neck. The two of us sat hip to hip on the sofa like it ain’t big enough for four people, his eyes turned inward, my eyes turned out. Mind full of the next time I’ll get to be alone.

I always say, “Yeah, I’m feelin’ good,” because it’s not a lie. I just can’t yet tell him why. And I see that crease pop up, because if I’m feeling good then why is Eugene picking up on my strange mood? Times like that I wanna just blurt it out to him. _I wanna wear women’s clothes._ I’m afraid he’ll take it the wrong. That he’ll think I wanna get fucked in panties or something else, because doesn’t the mind always leap to the most complicated thing? When really it’s so simple it’s almost impossible for me to explain. Like trying to tell him why I love men. Something hardwired into me that I just don’t have the words to put to it. 

He strokes a hand through my hair, and I tip my head back into the touch. Imagine him braiding it, imagine him seeing me with my neck bare and my curls around my face, mouth heavy and full with lipstick. I wanna get my hands on more cosmetics, but I don’t know how. 

“You look so beautiful,” Eugene murmurs, and I smile, and let him pull me close for a kiss. 

Of course, I know that we know each other too well to think I’d be able to keep anything from Eugene for too long. There’s something about going through a war with somebody, getting spit out the other side and taking a look at each other, and making the decision to keep going. There’s a level of intimacy there which can’t ever fade, even if me and Eugene broke up tomorrow and went our separate ways for the rest of our lives. He’s seen me in all sorts of states. Coming home early from the bar to find me done up and smoking a cigarette in front of my reflection is just a state amongst many. 

I blink at him, my mouth dropped open. Narcissus, interrupted. The both of us stood there in the hallway with the apartment door open, the slash of the light from outside catching us both in our frozen shock. For a long, dragging moment, neither of us say a thing. I’m wearing lipstick, and kohl around my eyes that I’d stolen from the drugstore. Silk in my hair. A slippery nylon slip I’d found amongst my mama’s things. Smelling of her, smelling like a woman. Eugene smells like cigarettes and booze.

The door shuts behind him, and we’re reduced to gold-lit figures in the mirror, illuminated by the lamp on the hall stand that I was admiring myself in front of. I say, “Gene, you’re home early,” like he caught me quietly reading a book with a drink, not pretty like a girl and a little tipsy like one too. Vodka soda. Isn’t it funny, the little things that feel right?

Eugene opens his mouth, and then shuts it. My heart is high up in my throat, beating away like it had that very first afternoon that I’d done myself up. Nerves, but no real fear. It was only a matter of time before this happened, after all.

After what feels like an eternity, Eugene murmurs, “Merriell,” and then seems to falter. His eyes dart over me, and I brace myself for the wrong thing but all that comes out is: “You look nice.”

The pillar of ash on the end of my cigarette is growing, trembling. I swallow hard against the lump in my throat, but still my voice comes out small when I say, “I’m sorry,” and, “I meant to tell you before you saw me.”

It’s a half-lie. A distant part of me is grateful for the universe deciding that it’s time to stop hiding this from him; for deciding to give me an easy out. 

“Don’t be sorry,” he says, immediately. We’re still both squashed into the hallway, breathing in the smoky air from my cigarette, our reflections making it impossible for me to find distance from the scene. Everywhere I look, there’s Eugene. Confusion etched in every line of his face, but his eyes warm; black and melting in the dim light. “This is a surprise,” he admits, and I laugh; a nervous burst of laughter. 

“You want a drink?” I ask, and his eyes flick heavenward, the tight line of his body relaxing.

“Yes,” he says, emphatically, and I can’t help but feel his eyes on my bare shoulders, on my bare neck, as I lead the way through into the kitchen. 

I make him a drink, but linger by the counter, watching him. The kind of silence between us that hasn’t been around in a while. Eugene’s sat at the kitchen table, shifting his drink between his hands. The wet slide of the glass across the wood. I’d put music on, as I’d gotten ready, and the record now plays into the space our words have left. Something blue, and slow. I can see him thinking; can see him turning his words over in his head. Eugene’s always been so internal. Sometimes I wish I could get even a glimpse into his head. 

“How long?” he asks, and I swallow. 

“A few weeks.” 

His eyes find mine, sharp through the gloom. I’d only left a few lamps on, preferring the way they hit me as opposed to the strong overhead light. “You look beautiful,” he says, honestly, and I feel myself blush. In the same breath, he adds, “What does it mean?” 

I know he’s drunk by the way his eyes trail over me. All of a sudden, I become over-aware of how the slip covers me. Short, and clinging; a pale ivory against my skin. I hunch my shoulders, and glance away. “I dunno,” I mutter. “Just feels good.”

How do I tell him about that feeling of something huge and urgent pressing against me, inside? The lightness I feel when I catch myself in a reflective surface and see neither man nor woman but some shadowy figure straddling the two? My draw towards beauty. Flo in her wedding dress, radiant. I’ve never felt at home in my skin; always felt like I was wearing some ill-fitting suit that was a size too small. It got better once I started sleeping with men. Even more so that first time I tied my hair up and met my eyes and saw my mama looking back at me. 

Eugene says, “I’m not mad.”

“Why would you be?” I reply. That old contrary urge in me. I can dress myself up as much as I like but I’m still the mean old me underneath it all. Eugene snorts, because he knows that too. I feel the corner of my mouth lift. “Well?” 

He’s grinning, lifting his glass to his mouth to hide it as his eyes meet mine. “C’mon,” he says. The ice clatters against the side of he glass as he sets it back to the table. “Gimme a second.”

I can practically hear the cogs whirring in his head, so I give him a second. Pour myself a fresh drink and finally inch myself over to the table, to take a seat at Eugene’s side. His hand finds its way to rest warm against my thigh, right there where the end of the slip flirts with my skin. His eyes are very open, on mine. 

“Is this a sex thing?” he asks, and groans when I laugh. “Merriell!” he cries. “I have to ask!” 

“ _No_ ,” I say, and mean it, though the feeling of his palm against my bare skin is making me think of all sorts. I shake my head, and stand, disconnecting from his warm hand as I escape to the sink. He lets me go easily, settling back in his chair to watch me struggle to speak. “No, it’s just —” I grit my teeth, and search for a way to say it. “It’s somethin’ I think I’ve always wanted. Only recently I got brave to even try it.”

I’m over-aware of my lipsticked mouth. The heavy weight of earrings in my ears. Eugene’s eyes on all these parts of me. He isn’t attracted to women, and for a moment nerves bloom inside of me that this is gonna be the step too far. Past all the grief I gave him in those years after the war, where I couldn’t see the end for everything I was drowned in. Past my quirks, my meanness, my stubbornness. But then I turn my head and I catch his eyes, and my nerves settle. His sweet brown eyes. The smile playing around his mouth. I want to ask him what he’s thinking but he beats me to it.

“It’s nice seein’ you happy,” he murmurs. I don’t know how to respond to that so I don’t; just cut my eyes away, and find my shadowy reflection in the window opposite. At nighttime the windows become mirrors; big dark squares reflecting everything back inside the house. In that world my body is vague, with the way the light hits and shines off the nylon slip. My piled up curls. The fabricated curve of my waist, my hip. I sigh, and slouch back against the counter, eyes on myself.

“Is this weird?” I ask, and bring my cigarette to my mouth as I glance back at Eugene, who is looking at me like he’s seeing me for the very first time. Stupidly, I feel shy under his attention. Like I’m stripped naked, or stripped even further than that. Down to muscle, to bone, to raw nerve. He’s seeing me with very few walls up. I wonder if he knows.

“It’s not weird,” he says, and the chair creaks under him as he stands to cross the room. The musky smell of his cologne. I’m wearing the fragrance beaten into the thin slip hanging off my shoulders; something old, and floral. I wonder if he likes it, just as his hand slides over my waist and I feel myself go limp in his arms. “Not weird at all,” he murmurs, thumb against my chin, keeping my eyes on him. “If it makes you feel good, I like it.” And then, “You don’t have to keep secrets from me.”

“This one, I did,” I breathe, feeling just right with his hands on me. Eugene’s thumb finds the middle of my bottom lip, and comes away plum-smeared as he splays his warm palm against my cheek to kiss me. Gently, sweetly, like I’m something to be savoured. When we part his mouth is dark with my lipstick and I smile, and raise a hand to rub at it. His eyelids are dipped low, eyes dark and playful beyond. 

“Well, you don’t have to keep it secret any more.” His eyes curve warmly, hand coming up to touch my hair. “Lovely,” he breathes, absently. I snort. 

“You’re drunk.”

He ignores me, and kisses me again, hand to the small of my back and curving my close to his body. “I’ll buy you a dress,” he murmurs, when we part, though he doesn’t go far. Lips lingering above mine. I wonder what sort of picture we make in those window-mirrors now. “Makeup, perfume, anything.”

I make a noise, feeling so full up on his love that for a second it sours, just slightly. I always have a habit of doing that to myself. A hand to his chest has Eugene putting space between us, just enough for me to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth and ask, “This really doesn’t bother you?” 

Eugene’s thumb strokes against my waist, against the silky fabric over my skin. “I was pretty surprised to see you all done up at first,” he admits. I know he’s telling the truth by the way he holds my gaze. “Never knew you wanted somethin’ like this but,” he shrugs, “you’ve always liked things pretty.”

I huff, and smack his chest lightly with the palm I have pressed there. The thump of his sweet heart under my hand. “I’ve wanted it for a long time,” I say, and drop my eyes to my hand. Hook my fingers in the collar of his button-up. “Felt like it was gonna eat me up if I left it longer.”

“How long?” he asks, and sways me very gently. The record is still spinning, that warm mellow music. I swallow.

“Long as I can remember.” My mama, her dressing table, the reverent way I’d watch her fix her face. “I forgot about it for a while but it always comes back.”

Eugene ducks his face into my hair, and makes a noise. “Better late than never.” 

“You’re right,” I murmur, and lean out from the circle of his arms to stub my forgotten cigarette out in the sink. We’re both lingering in the warm pool of light in the kitchen still, as though to move from here will be to disrupt the peace that’s settled over us. I’m fighting the urge to interrogate him, to ask, _are you sure?_ and _do you really mean that?_ and _do you really not think I’m a freak?_ I’m trying to get better at accepting Eugene’s words at face value. He’s never lied to me before. He’s got no reason to lie to me now. 

We have another drink together, and sway vaguely in time to the music on the record player as we talk some more. Me stumbling over my words, my wants. Eugene looking at me like I’m the prettiest thing he’s ever come across. I feel so seen that it makes my throat hurt, the same unshed tears from when I’d looked in the mirror and seen my mama for that split second. They don’t fall, but they lodge there, something for me to swallow around. I’ve never felt comfortable in my skin. The difference is now I think I might be working towards some kind of comfort, whatever it might look like. 

Once the record spins down to nothing but the faint scratching of the needle against the finished record, we abandon our glasses to the sink and go to bed. Eugene peels me out of my slip, pinching at my waist and grinning until I yelp, the lipstick on my mouth worn and soft and comfortable as he pulls me into bed and kisses me soundly. Both of us covered in that deep plum. His hands in my hair, tangling up with the scarf until he pulls it loose and sheds it to the bedsheets, and then all I’m wearing is the lipstick, the kohl, the gold in my ears. My curls loose around my head as Eugene props himself up on his elbow to look at me. In the dark of our bedroom, his eyes are black, and gentle. 

“You ain’t ever gotta hide a thing from me,” he says, and I scoff, and go to turn my head just to escape the heaviness of his eyes, but a hand to my jaw stays me. Very earnestly, Eugene adds, “D’you hear me?”

Quietly, I murmur, “I hear you,” and feel myself go warm under his gaze. I feel it, that undefinable feeling that I’ve been chasing since my brain got switched back on after all those years at war. The shine of lights over pearls, Flo’s happy beautiful face. Glowing, from the inside out. I think I have a name to put to it, now. 

I give myself over to it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! i've been thinking about snafu exploring his femininity for so long, i just had to write it, and hope you enjoyed :^)


End file.
